


A Certain Slant of Light

by medea1313



Category: Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-08-23 03:02:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8311492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/medea1313/pseuds/medea1313
Summary: "That night, I dreamt I went to Manderley. Not the Manderley of today, with its field of azaleas, and its wide, sloping lawn, and its clear paths through the woods to the sea; in the dream I went to Manderley again as it was on that long ago summer afternoon. It seemed to me I stood in the sailing cove by the woods, looking now down at the beach empty of cottages or dinghies, now into the dark and tangled trees. I wore my schoolgirl’s frock and my hair was long and messy in the wind, and I was hesitant to trespass though I wanted to know what was through the woods, or perhaps, what was in the woods, what dark mysteries awaited. Then Helen was beside me, also a girl, lovely and fresh-faced, holding her hat and laughing, and she took my hand and we ducked beneath a branch together."Rebecca's version of the story.





	1. The Dream

 

_1936_

That night, I dreamt I went to Manderley. Not the Manderley of today, with its field of azaleas, and its wide, sloping lawn, and its clear paths through the woods to the sea; in the dream I went to Manderley again as it was on that long ago summer afternoon. It seemed to me I stood in the sailing cove by the woods, looking now down at the beach empty of cottages or dinghies, now into the dark and tangled trees. I wore my schoolgirl’s frock and my hair was long and messy in the wind, and I was hesitant to trespass though I wanted to know what was through the woods, or perhaps, what was in the woods, what dark mysteries awaited. Then Helen was beside me, also a girl, lovely and fresh-faced, holding her hat and laughing, and she took my hand and we ducked beneath a branch together.

Now the woods are kept in check, somewhat, allowing at least for easy transgress from house to shore. But in those days there was only one gardener and he mostly tended the roses and other flowers near the house — as I learned later — and the woods were left to their own devices. In my dream, they were so thick we could not walk but had to crawl, down among the soft rotting leaves and moss and crawling insects. Helen found a caterpillar and we watched it move so slowly despite all those legs. In my dream, we never made it to the house at all, simply lay down when the branches became too tangled, like sleeping beauty in her wall of thorns. Helen lay on her back and I put my head on her chest and listened to the gallop of her heart, and kissed her pale throat and the above us, birds sang in the dark.

In reality, we did find the house that day. I emerged first, almost accidentally, from the trees onto the untended lawn, and gasped and pushed her back behind me as if to protect her. “What is it?” she asked breathlessly, going up on tip toes to look over my shoulder. “Oh, what a lovely house.”

It was lovely, and a little sad looking. The house was covered with ivy — gone now — and no one seemed to move inside or out. But it had perfect bones, simple and elegant. “That will be my house one day,” I said, utterly confident. “And these will be my woods. Our woods.”

Helen laughed, but I didn’t let her tell me that I was teasing or wrong. I pulled her back into the dark and pressed her trembling body against a tree and kissed her there, a promise. Her lips were soft, her mouth tasted of the orange squash we’d had for lunch. We’d never kissed before, on the lips. “Oh,” she said softly when I pulled back. One of her hands clutched mine tightly, as if she was frightened, but the other smoothed my hair, tucked it behind my ear, trembling touched my ear and my cheek.

“Our woods,” I said again, “I promise.” And then I kissed her again, and again, until she gasped and arched her small breasts into mine and I knew her hand was clutching at me not for fear but for some other reason altogether.

When I woke it was to the warmth of another body beside me and for a moment I hoped it was Helen after all but then I breathed in and knew it was Jack. I was in my London flat, and Jack was naked and smelled of whiskey and cigars and sweat, and I remembered him taking me out dancing the night before, and what a bore it had been, and how I’d suggested coming back to my flat because at least it would be less boring to strip him down to his bare, tanned skin and slap him about a bit. But now, in the pale winter morning light, with Helen’s scent still in my mind from the dream, Helen’s old, teenaged scent, and now the memory of orange squash — well now I did not want Jack here at all. Now Jack was an unwelcome distraction rather than a welcome one. I stared for a moment at his arm, furred and going to fat and felt almost a physical pain at the sight, and then I shoved it, and him, and climbed out of bed shouting at him to get out.

“What the hell?” He came awake with a shout too, and I laughed at what the neighbors must think of us, and threw his clothes at his head.

“Out, out, out,” I said, laughing but vicious too, knowing how his head must throb and his muscles ache from my punishment of the night before. “Before I take a horsewhip to you, as you know I will.”

He did know too, I’d done it often enough.

He was out of bed in a moment, moving fast enough that I decided I could ignore him. I threw on my dressing gown and ran a brush through my hair, trying to remember Helen’s scent but it was gone. Perhaps I could see her today. If I rang her and tried the bridge gambit, maybe she could slip away, come down to the cottage tonight, I could drive straight back to Manderley after that blasted appointment.

Jack came over, tried to put his hands about my waist — or inside my dressing gown more likely — and I threatened him with the hairbrush. “You’re such a bitch in the mornings,” he remarked, reaching around me instead for a matchbook and lighting a cigarette.

“I’m a bitch to anybody who lingers unwanted in my flat.” I accepted the cigarette anyway as he lit another. I thought about stubbing it out on his arm. That would send him running quick enough.

Half-dressed (trousers, unbuttoned shirt), Jack was quite good-looking despite his red eyes. I looked him up and down as I inhaled but felt nothing but that same pain, the usual, nagging thing. He still was mostly lean and muscles though he’d be going to fat soon enough; enough hair to seem manly but not too much to cover up his nipples or make him appear an ape. His hair was a mess, hanging down into his eyes, and he pushed it back as he stared right back at me. I knew what he saw, what he’d always seen: a pale, slender, dark-haired, dark-eyed goddess of death.

“I suppose I’d better go then,” he said finally, when it became clear I wasn’t going to budge towards him.

I didn’t even bother replying, since I’d made my position so abundantly clear, simply turned away from him and went to the window. It was, unsurprisingly, a gray morning. The Thames was dull and dirty, the city beyond not terribly different. I opened the casement to let the air in, not particularly fresh but better than the stale sex smell of the flat, and stood there looking out until Jack let himself out with a sharp click of the door. I dropped the remains of my cigarette out the window and went to the telephone to ring Helen. Even though I’d just woken they must be well done with breakfast, it was a perfectly reasonable time to call someone in the country. If she left after lunch, and I left right away, we could meet at Manderley by tea.

But I couldn’t leave right away, I remembered, even as I picked up the receiver. I dropped it again, cursing. That damned appointment. Perhaps I could cancel? But even as I thought it the pain seemed to surge and I dropped to my vanity stool. I had better go, hadn’t I? Better to know than not to know. I had always believed in facing my enemies straight on. Helen would have to wait until tomorrow after all, unless she could come to London… I glanced around the flat, strewn with clothing and lipstick-stained glasses and cigarette butts and objects of mild torture. No, not here. The cottage was so much better, for Helen. Well I could call her anyway, make plans for the next day. But no, the next day was Thursday and the first weekend guests were arriving. There wouldn’t be any night at the cottage alone with Helen, at least not until Monday. Bloody hell. There was a martini glass on the vanity that shattered very satisfactorily when I threw it at the wall. It did not change the central fact that I was not sure I could make it until Monday without seeing her. I felt black all the way through, monstrous. I would not be able to smile at my guests and see to their comfort and touch Max’s arm like a goddamn wife. I would not be able to do any of it.

I lit another cigarette, my hands almost shaking, and picked up the telephone. If it came to a disastrous house party or a single, unwelcome guest, surely Max would not begrudge me? He could have everything he wanted if I had Helen. “Why don’t you and Patrick come down for the weekend?” I heard myself say, ten minutes later. “We would so love to have you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started this long piece for NaNoWriMo a couple years ago and was recently inspired to look at it again. It's not done, and I can't promise it will be (though you probably know how the story ends!), but hoping that posting it may get me working again. It will alternate between the present (1936) and Rebecca's past, and I'll be posting what I have over the next week or two. Feedback is much appreciated!


	2. Cherub

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Growing up female and beautiful is dangerous, but Rebecca was always a fighter.
> 
> Major trigger warnings for attempted molestation of a child and pre-teen girl.

_1915-1918_

 

I remember my first house party with perfect clarity. Perhaps there had been others, when I was a very little girl and my mother was well, but they made no lasting impression. When I was ten years old, after our mourning had officially ended, and my father was, for all intents and purposes, returned to the bachelor ranks, he held a shooting party of twelve guests. Our estate was not particularly grand but it had excellent grounds and my father had spent his years of mourning expanding our stables. He was eager, I recall, to show off his new horses, and with the arrival of Mrs. Danvers a year before the house and staff were finally ready to handle the demands of a party including both gentlemen and ladies.

Twelve guests: six of each. The ladies, I knew even then, were rather fast, some wives of my father’s friends, two merry widows, and one quite scandalous American divorcée. The gentlemen were all contemporaries of my father’s, not quite young anymore but neither middle-aged. I watched them arrive from the attic where I had taken over a whole wing and forbid anyone but Danny entry. Danny — Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper — was far too busy with the party to come and so I was guaranteed solitude that afternoon, I believed. By opening the window all the way and sticking my head and shoulders out I had a perfect view of the carriages and motor cars as they appeared one by one down the drive. It was a short drive, wide and unshaded, nothing at all like Manderley’s. I liked to see what the guests wore and how they behaved when they emerged from their conveyances: tired, bored, delighted, petulant, charming, etc. I remember only once did someone look up and see me: Mr. Edward Thurston, who smiled and waved to me as if it were perfectly natural for a pair of scrawny arms and a mass of dark hair to be hanging out of an attic window. I waved back, knowing that even if the servants saw, no one would come for me. I had already learnt that I could get what I wanted by being stubborn, or if that failed, by lying very convincingly to my father or Mrs. Danvers, and none of them wanted to cross me. Mr. Thurston’s hair gleamed in the sun as he took off his hat to go inside, and then he was gone and my waiting commenced.

There were more exciting things than waiting coming that afternoon though. I had settled back into my waiting position — back against the wall, Kipling novel on my knees, one ear cocked for noise on the drive — when I heard the attic door swing open. “Hello little girl,” a voice called out, softly but with a hard edge.

“Hello,” I said back without hesitation. I did not bother to stand up or put my book aside, or make it any easier for him to find me, but neither did I try to hide. I could hear him blundering around, kicking old trunks and cursing under his breath once. He peeked around the corner finally, a little dusty, but his hair still shiny like a gold coin.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“That’s not a very polite way to greet a guest,” Mr. Edward Thurston said.

I pointed out that he was my father’s guest, not mine, and he protested that I was now the lady of the house. He bowed as he introduced himself. He’d come to the estate before, but we’d never met, I’d only see him down the hall when I was brought down to my father in the afternoon and outside while I was riding my pony. I introduced myself back.

He found an old table to lean against and crossed his ankles, regarding me. “You gave me rather a fright, hanging out of that window,” he said, “I thought at first you meant to jump.”

I scoffed and assured him I would never be so foolish.

“Then I thought perhaps you were a vision, a little floating cherub,” he said. “You know you have quite the face on you. Very pretty. Just the sort of face a vision would have, were one to appear to a fellow.”

“Do you have many visions?” I asked pertly. I could hear another car coming down the drive and I wanted to look at it, but I was reluctant to stick my head back out the window while he stood there.

“Not many, no. And I knew you weren’t one when you waved back. Can’t imagine angels do a great deal of that.” His eyes roamed the attic for a moment, and then returned to rest on my face. My very pretty face. I’d been called beautiful before, by my mother and grandfather, and by Mrs. Danvers and other servants. But this felt different. He seemed to want some response from me, some recompense for the compliment.

“What else don’t angels do?” I asked.

His gaze hardened at that, his nostrils flaring a little. “Why, all sorts of things.”

“I think perhaps you should make me a list,” I said, setting my book aside finally and standing up. I was wearing an old frock that was too short. I had been growing, my legs lengthening and lengthening until I was almost as tall as a grown woman. “I shouldn’t wish to behave badly.”

His eyes dropped down over my bare calves and knees and he licked his lips, a gesture which made me shudder. My throat felt tight and I was hot suddenly, but also I knew that he wouldn’t try anything. Not as long as I kept him talking. He thought we were playing a game now, and I always won when I played games.

“A list of things it would be very naughty for you to do?” he offered, his voice tight.

“Naughty enough that an angel wouldn’t anyway,” I said. Very casually and slowly and picked up my book and closed the window behind me. “Will you make the list for me? You can give it to me tomorrow. Father said I might come down for the picnic if I am good until then.”

I did not look at him but knew that he started a little at the reminder that I had a father, a man whose house he was currently in. I was no seductive urchin child, for all my ill-fitting clothes and mussed hair. I gave him a moment to think of that and then darted past, too quick for him to catch me, and paused to look back only when I was at the door. I smiled and said, “See you tomorrow then.”

I suppose Mr. Edward Thurston was the first man who was ever in love with me, as they say. It’s always the men that say that, as if to prove to themselves that their feelings are pure and noble. Truly they love me for my perfect face, and not for my long legs, as if that makes it better. They can simply see my goodness, they protest. For nothing so beautiful could be bad… I wish they would tell Max that, I think he needs a reminder these days.

It took everything in me that week, at the age of ten, to keep Mr. Thurston in his proper place, that is, several feet away from me at all times. I could not sleep, and made Danny give me the key to my door so I could lock myself in at night. I still think back and feel a frisson of fear at the unknown, at being wanted in some way I could not then understand. But I did it anyway. I teased him and scolded him and promised him things until the house party was over and he went away again, and I was safe. And the next time it was easier. It is always easier the next time.

 

My greatest test was not any of my father’s friends, though more than Mr. Thurston took a liking to me in those days. The war came soon enough and there were no more house parties, and by the time it ended I was thoroughly mettled. No, my greatest test and my greatest triumph was my cousin, Jack Favell. Jack had been coming every summer as long as I could remember, except when my mother was very ill and just after she died. But his visits changed when he was sixteen and I thirteen. By then I was used to male attention. I was already at my full height, taller than all the boys my age and many who were older. I suppose I was beautiful; my skin had never gone truly bad, my baby fat had melted away, and I was like a Greek sylph, all hair and eyes. Mrs. Danvers had insisted on getting me a decent wardrobe for my new body and would come at night and brush my hair a hundred times herself, and practice putting it up so we could see what it would look like when I was older and went to London, though in truth I was still a little wild and liked best to wear trousers and tuck my hair up under a cap and pretend to be a boy.

Jack had always been the black sheep of the family. His mother was my father’s first cousin and everyone thought she had married beneath her, the second son of a somewhat questionable family in Derbyshire whom she had either fallen in love with or let compromise her and been forced to marry, depending upon whom one asked. Still, his parents had settled in to perfect bourgeois respectability — the marrying down had turned out to be mostly a lack of money and intelligence, not continuing scandal — and poor Jack was the confused result. His parents hadn’t money or wits to raise him as a gentleman, so my father paid for him to go to school. Jack was rubbish at school, and resented it and my father’s help, and so misbehaved at every opportunity. He horrified his parents, who did not understand that boys will be boys, and annoyed my father, who had hoped Jack would be the son he lacked. Every time he got a letter about another scrape Jack was in, he would come into my room and sit on my bed and look around at the girlish decorations and sigh and say, “My pet, how I wish you had been a boy.” It was a wish I fervently shared. Then he would stroke my hair or pull my braid or kiss me, as if to make up for the insult, and I would think, if I were a boy, I would be too old for such things, and you wouldn’t call me pet either.

Nevertheless, Jack was all we had on the son/brother front, and we both felt far more affection for him than he deserved. I knew he was not terribly bright, nor brave, nor good, but he could be entertaining, and my life was rather boring at the time, so that was a quality I valued.

When he arrived for that summer’s holiday, he looked almost a stranger. He had grown since I’d last seen him, until he was finally taller than me once more, and he’d developed a man’s body, though he used it awkwardly. He had reddish blond hair, from his father, and bright blue eyes, and a very cocky swagger learned, no doubt, on the cricket pitch at school. He came immediately to the schoolroom, where I was having a French lesson with my governess — I had briefly studied German when she first came, but we dropped the subject immediately upon the war breaking out later that year, and returned to French, as a much safer bet — and announced himself thusly: “Drop all that nonsense immediately, I’m here.” Then he looked at me, really looked, for the first time since he’d arrived. I was wearing a new frock, white I think, and probably had a ribbon in my hair. I must have looked very grown up since he’d last seen me, as he did to me. The difference was that he was very interested in what he saw; I noted the changes to his physique but felt nothing about them. He whistled and said, “My, how you’ve grown,” his blue eyes sharpening into hunger as they lingered over my newly budded breasts, and the long lazy curls of my hair.

“Mr. Favell, we are in the middle of a lesson,” my governess said rather severely for her. She was not a typical governess, not ugly, nor spinsterish, nor jealous. In fact I thought her rather wonderful for a time. My father, knowing I had no mother no teach me the social graces, had hired the youngest, prettiest, most stylish governess he could find. (Later I realized there were other reasons for this, but at the time I accepted that it was simply to further my education.) Which is not to say that Miss Rogers was not intelligent as well. On the contrary, she’d been educated at Lady Margaret’s Hall, and had a thorough grasp of Greek and Latin, world history, literature, mathematics, and the modern languages. It is a marvel, in fact, that we managed to entice her, but I suppose that my father seduced her into it, likely promising marriage when I’d been sufficiently educated, and also I was an excellent student and gave her no trouble, and her life was really rather easy for a governess’ at that time.

Her only real trouble at our house was Danny; Danny, who was not and had never been pretty, and who ranked below Miss Rogers though she ran the household, was jealous, and Iplayed them off against each other shamelessly. Of course I had a schoolgirl crush on Miss Rogers when she first arrived, beautiful and independent, and full of knowledge of the world. Danny had been used to being the only person I liked and trusted, but she could see right away that Miss Rogers was a threat, that I could become intimate with my governess and forget her. That was when Danny started playing lady’s maid for me, though I was only eleven, and she taught herself about fashion and ordered new clothes for me so I would not feel Miss Rogers was my only teacher in the ways of elegant womanhood. I encouraged the rivalry, always dropping comments around Danny about Miss Rogers’ opinions on the way the household was run, and how Miss Rogers felt about the proper way to arrange flowers, and what Miss Rogers thought of my new frock. Miss Rogers was more oblivious, but she suffered the effects of my teasing when Danny would bring her cold tea or have the maid build up only a small fire in her room, or sundry other minor inconveniences which Miss Rogers had not the wherewithal to complain of in someone else’s house. Miss Rogers was too well-bred to complain overmuch to me, but occasionally she would ask me about Danny in such a way I knew that she was suspicious of how often these things seemed to happen to her, and how they never happened to anyone else in the household. I would play the fool then, and then laugh behind both their backs, and Danny would insist on me getting whatever I wanted, and Miss Rogers would grit her teeth and bear it.

Jack knew of none of this, of course, and he only laughed and said, “Bugger it. Come for a ride, coz, won’t you?”

If it has been anyone but Jack who asked, I would gladly have buggered my French lessons, but I didn’t want him to think he could order me about. “I already rode this morning. You’ll just have to wait, Jack.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s far too nice a day to sit in here. Come along.”

“Ask me nicely next time, and perhaps I will,” I said primly, and turned back to my French primer, ignoring him. He stood there for a long time as we continued the lesson, watching me, until Miss Rogers grew annoyed and sent him away.

 

The first time Jack tried to kiss me was in the hall after dinner. He’d been with us for two weeks. When Jack was visiting and there were no other guests we dined with my father downstairs, the first time I had regularly been allowed to stay up late and eat in the dining room. Jack was too old for the schoolroom but too young for regular company, and though I was certainly still of an age to eat upstairs, my looks and general air of maturity meant no one seemed to remember my real age. My father especially said he liked to have me at the table, and that I looked very well sitting opposite him.

After dinner we would all sit in the library together and play cards, or Jack and I would play a duet — that is, I would play and he would sing, as he was an absolute terror at the piano — while my father and Miss Rogers would watch, and then I would be sent to bed while they stayed up to do whatever it was grown ups did when alone. Sometimes Miss Rogers would stay with them but more often she would retire when I did. How I wished I could stay after Miss Rogers left and be taught, like Jack, to smoke, and hold my liquor, and talk properly about horses and cars.

In the summer, Miss Rogers also had a holiday, when she would go visit her family for a month. This holiday began soon after Jack arrived; it was widely acknowledged I was distracted from my lessons by my cousin anyway, and it was best to combine the holidays. Without her dampening presence, Jack and I behaved like wild animals during the day and scrubbed ourselves into a veneer of civilization just in time for dinner. Since my growth spurt I had been allowed to ride full-grown horses and Jack and I went for bruising rides hours of every day. We had a gig I was learning to drive as well, which we would take out with a giant picnic hamper, and inevitably Jack’s stolen bottle of wine. I would dress as a boy and Jack would take me into the village pub to drink ale and play noxious games and leer at women. Everything was a race, a contest: if we swam in the pond, it was to see who could reach the other side first; if we played tennis, I was determined to triumph despite his superior power. I caught him looking at me sometimes, the way he had that first day, the way Mr. Thurston and other grown men had. But it was a rare enough occurrence that I mostly ignored it; I still thought we could be boys together. Mostly it came at night, after we had to return to dinner, and I donned a flattering frock and brushed my hair until it shone, and I almost felt like a different person then, so it did not bother me.

One night during Miss Rogers’ absence, my father was called away from the dinner table before the pudding was served. While the butler, Potts, was helping my father, Jack poured more wine into both of our glasses, and I downed mine immediately, never one to resist a dare. I could feel heat rising in my cheeks and throat as the wine settled into my stomach, and I laughed and was about to ask Jack how much wine he drank in secret every night, when Potts returned. We finished our dinner soon and left to go to the drawing room as normal. However Jack took my arm when we stepped into the hall and pulled me the opposite direction, into the dark hall around the corner.

I thought perhaps we would have more wine, or sneak out to the stables, or go for a secret midnight swim or something else adventurous. But that was not the sort of adventure he had in mind. Instead he grabbed my upper arms and pushed me against the wall, hard, and said my name in sort of a moan, and then kissed me. His mouth was hot and sour and slick. Even Mr. Thurston had never gotten close enough to kiss me, and for a moment I was actually frightened. But then disgust kicked in, and anger, and I shoved him away hard. He was panting as if he had run a long way. I found that disgusting too, his heavy breath. We stared at each other. It was too dark in the hall to make out much of his expression, though I could see he was excited.

“Don’t be frightened,” he said finally, and it struck me as terribly funny. Me, frightened, of Jack?

I laughed in his face. He didn’t take it as mockery though, I could see. He smiled as if relieved. He thought we were on the same side. “Of course you’re not frightened of anything,” he said, his smile turning covetous, and he reached toward me again. I wanted to slap him, to scratch him, to tell him I was laughing at him, not with him, but my throat was closed up too tight. Instead I ran away, fleeing into the brightly lit hall, to my father waiting in the drawing room. I hated myself for running. Even as I sat across from my father for a hand of whist I could feel his hands on my arms, his sweaty lips pressing too hard against mine, and I imagined opening my mouth and biting him. Next time, I vowed to myself, as he slunk in a moment later, triumphant and wary in equal measure, next time I would bite him.

 

My father’s estate had a small pond at it’s northwestern edge, a long walk or a short ride from the house. When the weather turned hot for a few short weeks of the summer we would swim there almost every day. When Jack was not visiting I would often ride over alone and go for a quick, naked swim. It was far enough removed from the village and any other houses that no one else came there, and it was perfectly safe for me to shed my borrowed boy’s clothes in a heap on the shore and dive in entirely unencumbered. I always loved the water. Before my mother became ill, we used to go to the seaside in the summer and I lived to sail and swim in the ocean, where the constant movement made me understand stillness for the first time. Since my mother’s death we had not returned to the shore. The pond was less satisfying than the sea but still felt more comfortable than land; left to myself I could swim its length for hours, and then spend more hours floating and staring up at the sun until all my eyes could see was white.

After Jack came swimming was not quite as satisfying because I had to wear a bathing costume. The long, heavy dress was too restricting for real movement and when we raced I would often wear my riding trousers and shirt instead, because at least I could move my arms and legs properly. If something upset me, or I was in a temper, I would sometimes sneak off without telling him so I could swim alone, without such encumbrances.

After Jack kissed me, I spent a few days punishing him by ignoring him. I left to go riding without telling him, told him I was busy reading when he wanted to play a game, and generally handled him as I imagined Miss Rogers would have wanted me to: like an offended lady. This was the opposite of the teasing tack I had taken with Mr. Thurston, but I was more uneasy about Jack’s advance than I had been about my father’s friend. Jack had already touched me, for one, not just contemplated it. But Jack was also my friend, my brother. I was young enough to still want him to respond to my clear lack of interest, to believe that he might take the hint. Jack responded to my pique by alternating pleading and anger of his own. One moment he pestered me to be a sport and come play with him, and the next he stomped off declaring he did not want a stupid girl’s company anyhow. We did not speak of the kiss, and he did not apologize.

A few days after the offense, I was monstrously hot and desperate for the cold clarity of the water. Jack had gone to the pub, sulking, and I thought I was perfectly safe to run off to the pond by myself. It was a beautiful day, the height of summer, and I wasted no time in shedding every garment and diving into the mucky water. The edges of the pond were full of plants and floating scum and tiny insects, but in the center it was deeper and one could float above the general muck. I swam a few laps and practiced diving for imagined objects, just to lose myself under the water and pretend I might never come up again. I liked to stay below until my lungs burned and my fingers shivered and my eyes stung, pulling up weeds by the stalk and chasing fish.

When I surfaced, I saw him. Jack was standing by the edge of the pond, near the horses, and my untidy pile of clothes. I didn’t know how long he had been there. He had taken his jacket off, and at first I thought he was simply standing there, gazing out at the water. But then his hand moved, and I saw that his trousers were open. He was holding his cock — at the time I thought ‘thing’ — and stroking it. He was too far away for me to make out details but I could see its pink eye, his tanned fingers, the look of frightened bliss on his face. He was looking directly at me. Had he seen me moving across the surface of the water, my pale skin exposed just below the surface? What could he see now? I did not allow myself to look down and check the opacity of the water. I would not let him think I was embarrassed.

Our eyes met and his arm moved convulsively, faster and then faster. I felt sick but also curious. What would he do if I came out of the water? I was anchored in one spot in the middle of the pond, my legs moving lazily, my hands spread wide on the surface of the water. What would I do if he came into the pond? He could not catch me, I thought scornfully. I was a better swimmer than he. On the other hand, if he stayed on land, I could never reach my clothes without allowing him not only a full view of my nakedness but also ample time to put his hands on me.

His gaze on me was devouring. I touched my mouth to see if he reacted; his breath grew shorter. I dipped my hand below the water and traced the small, high curve of my new breasts with my finger and thumb. My breasts were entirely submerged but I could tell from the shuddering of his shoulders that he could see what I did, that he could see me.

His movement grew more frantic and his neck stretched back, though he fought, I could see, to keep his eyes on me. I continued to kick, kick, kick, growing cold now, and to brush my sensitized skin so lightly with my fingertips. Finally he shouted my name, once, and closed his eyes as white liquid spurted from his cock and onto his hand and the ground. When he opened his eyes again, he was grinning. I hated him in that moment. If I’d had a pistol I would have shot him. He looked so triumphant, as if he’d had something from me, though I had given him nothing. He looked as if he’d won.

He moved toward the water to wash his hands off, and I abruptly began swimming to shore. He crouched by the water’s edge, watching me, still smiling. He had tucked his cock back inside his trousers but not buttoned them, so they gaped open obscenely. Funny, that was the first time I thought the word obscene. “I’ll be ready to go again in just a moment,” he called as I approached the shore. I did not know what that meant, though I could make a good guess.

I ignored him, finding my feet in the scummy edge and standing up out of the water. He whistled, long and low, but did not move. My hair fell over my breasts, mostly covering them though I imagine my nipples peeked out of the curtain, and my white belly and the new, dark triangle of hair and my lean thighs were all visible to his gaze.

I stalked out of the water and to my clothes, looking directly at him the whole time. Despite his smile his eyes were afraid and I knew he had expected me to continue hiding. He was not ready to take this any further, not yet. I deliberately gathered my hair up, exposing my chest to him, and wrung it out. I was shaking, but I told myself it was from the cold of staying in the water too long. He stood up, and then I thought maybe I had taken it too far. I was tall but he was taller still, could certainly overpower me if he wanted to. His trousers were still open, and I could see swelling there, as his promise to be ready again was spurred on by my blatant self-exposure.

I would not act afraid though. I reached, quite leisurely, for my chemise and dropped it over my head. He still did not move. Then my trousers, which I pulled on over goosebumped skin. My chemise clung to my wet chest I am sure, exposing nearly as much as when I was naked, but I felt better with my trousers buttoned. I pulled on my shirt and began on my boots.

For the first time then I turned my back to him, to untie my horse from the hitching post. He said my name abruptly and I waited to look back until I’d mounted. Now I could stop trembling. I was safe on horseback. I looked down at him, face still as impassive as I could make it. He smiled again and said, “Thank you.” Rage washed over me, hot and overwhelming. As if I had let him, as if I had given him something. I had not given him anything.

I pulled back on the reins, hard, startling my horse and causing her to rear in his direction. He jumped back and lost the smile for a moment and I tried to urge her to run him down, into the pond, but she was confused and would not go. I had no whip or spurs and she was a placid, friendly beast, not a high-strung animal like many of our horses who would startle and attack at the slightest pressure. Nevertheless, Jack took a step back from what must have been in my face, right into the mucky pond, ruining his boots. He swore, and then laughed, and then swore again. I bared my teeth at him but once again ran away.

 

Danny knew something was wrong when I got home, though I would not admit to it.

She had come to live with us the year after my mother died and she and I had quickly become close. I loved her ferocity. She was rather young then, to manage such a large house, and she made up for it by being stunningly competent and cowing all the maids into submission. When she had been with us for perhaps six months my nursemaid went on holiday and instead of sending up a maid to put me to bed, Danny came herself. She brushed and plaited my hair for me that night and tied the ribbon at the neck of my nightgown. All the while I chattered at her as I liked to do then, telling her of my pony and my place in the attic and what I truly thought about Cook. She was intimidating, but I’d never failed to win anyone over and I never doubted my ability to do so with her. My nurse liked to talk about herself, but I sensed that was not what Danny needed; she would rather be taken out of herself. When I was finally tucked into bed, I reached for her hand and said, “Thank you, Mrs. Danvers.” She was startled, I think, by the intimacy of the touch. For a long moment she stood there, looking down at our joined hands. Then she smiled, the first time I had ever seen her smile. “It was my pleasure,” she said. “Perhaps we can do it again tomorrow night?”

My nursemaid retired soon after, at Danny’s encouragement, and she took on all the extra work of the nursery, overseeing my meals upstairs and my baths and clothes and putting me to bed each night. With everyone else she continued to be stern and exacting, but I melted her quickly enough. I never could get her speak much of herself, but I was a selfish little thing and did not much care about that anyway. Instead she seemed to enjoy hearing all the details of my day. If I could get her talking at all it would be about her work. On days with very bad weather, before Miss Rogers came, I would often follow Danny about her business, learning how to run a large household. During my mother’s illness the staff had become sloppy, the house had become slightly shabby, and Danny did not tolerate either of those things. But mostly we spent time together in the evening, when she dressed me for dinner or put me to bed.

When I came home from the pond that afternoon I needed a bath rather dreadfully, and it was almost time to dress for dinner anyway. Danny came up to wash my hair as I sat in the bathtub, trying not to think of Jack and his hand moving, and how he had laughed as I rode away. She knew right away something was wrong. “Don’t be ridiculous, Danny,” I said, but I could not put much spirit into it. I kept wanting to curl up, I remember, pulling my knees up and resting my cheek on them even if it meant my mouth dipping below the water.

She insisted I was ill and could not go down to dinner. I felt like a terrible coward, but I took the excuse, and let her bring me up a tray with boring food and made a show of picking at it. But hiding felt worse than anything that had happened that afternoon. I thought about telling Danny, but what would she do? She thought me very brave and bold. She would be so disappointed if I told her I had let Jack do a thing and had not stopped him, had not even tried. Anyway, she had no power over Jack. It wouldn’t make any difference. I could tell her and ask her to tell my father, so I did not have to speak to him about it myself and Jack would get sent away. But I could not stand the cowardice of that either. Eventually Jack would return, or someone like him would appear, and I would have to be able to defend myself. Besides, if my father intervened, Jack might think I had not wanted him sent away. Jack might still act as if I had given him something, as if he had truly won. I wanted — I needed — to strip that triumph from him first. I needed to do it myself.

 

A few days later I turned fourteen. I had been pestering my father for months to let me drive his four-in-hand, and when he finally relented — as he always did eventually — he set the date for my birthday. I had given up on ignoring Jack but neither had I given him any chance to act, staying always around other people or at the very least, out of his reach. But on the morning of my birthday, after breakfast, I leaned over his chair, put my hand on his arm, and whispered, “A real man wouldn’t just sit by and watch me drive.” He straightened and looked a little wild for a moment, and I slipped away, knowing I’d hooked him.

The whole household came out to watch me drive the carriage: my father and Mrs. Danvers, the coachman and the stable boys, and even Cook. The horses were large, gorgeous, a perfectly matched set of bays. “May I ride behind you?” Jack asked nonchalantly, though we both knew that was not what he planned to do.

“If you must,” I said, “though I think you’ll be able to admire me better from the ground.”

I was to begin by going down the drive and back, only that, to make sure I could handle them properly. I started them sedately enough, but as soon as I was far enough that my father’s shouts would not reach me, I cracked my whip and sped them to a trot. They moved in perfect sync, and for a moment I forgot about Jack, delighted by my control of four enormous, beautiful animals, by the smoothness of the carriage along the drive. I’d just turned at the end to head back to the house when Jack made his move. He had been seated in the footman’s place, and all at once he slid over the back of the seat and was beside me, large and smiling. “Give me a turn now,” he said, but I ignored him, instead cracking the whip again and sending the horses into a canter. We flew now, just as he reached over and tried to take the reins from my hand.

I held firm, even as he pulled and worried at my grip. He put one arm around me, trying to grab from beneath my left hand and I shoved my elbow into his stomach, turned my head and bit him on the ear with all my strength. He gasped but did not cry out, trying in more earnest now, calling me names and cursing under his breath.

I did not bother to reply, simply kept hold tightly, using my knee and my elbow to push him away. Meanwhile the horses ran, bumping now over the drive, the trees and fields rushing by us. I had squirmed half onto his lap in the struggle and I could feel that thing beneath my thigh, excited, as he touched me now. He was barely even trying to get the reins anymore, though from the house it must have looked like we continued to fight for them; instead he grabbed a handful of breast roughly and pulled at my hair, his breathing heavy. He was bigger than me, but I knew I would win nonetheless. When his face drifted too close to my head I banged it back, hard, against his nose, and he did cry out then, and let go of me for a moment. A moment was long enough: I needed only one hand to control the horses, though they were frightened now by the commotion, and I used the other to raise my whip and it down over his head. Stunned, he fell back further and started screaming at me, calling me a hell cat. I shoved him away to the far side of the seat and brought my whip down again over his lap, which made his eyes open wide in horror, and then put a boot on him and shoved him out of the carriage. He rolled and sat up as we thundered away, yelling after me, and sometimes laughing, until I was too far away to hear him.

I wondered, years later, if he’d always had a taste for pain or if that day had formed him as much as it had me.

At the time I felt curiously beaten, though I knew I’d triumphed. I told my father soon after that Jack had been pestering me, though in fact he had not tried anything else. It was simply the next part of my victory. Jack was sent away then to the Navy, though he was not old enough to fight, and never actually made it into the war. I missed his companionship, and wished to myself that he could have left well enough alone, and we could have gone on being boys together. But perhaps it was already too late for that. He did teach me to defend myself by whatever means necessary, for which I was grateful, though I had other such lessons still in my future.


	3. A Very Slightly Better Person

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I drove back to Manderley Wednesday evening. Nobody would arrive until late Thursday, perhaps a few for tea but mostly after that, and I would have had plenty of time to drive Thursday morning, but I find it easier if I wake up at Manderley. There is nothing like a Manderley breakfast and a morning answering correspondence to remind me of the person I am supposed to be."

_1936_

 

Driving a car has much of the same appeal as a four-in-hand: all that speed and power at one’s fingertips. I prefer the carriage in my heart because the horses add an element of physicality that the automobile lacks, however I must admit that for raw power, an engine is not to be dismissed. Max bought me my car for our first wedding anniversary. I believe he thought it would be a relief to him, my driving away, but now I imagine he regrets it. I’d be so much more predictable had I to run on the train schedule.

I drove back to Manderley Wednesday evening. Nobody would arrive until late Thursday, perhaps a few for tea but mostly after that, and I would have had plenty of time to drive Thursday morning, but I find it easier if I wake up at Manderley. There is nothing like a Manderley breakfast and a morning answering correspondence to remind me of the person I am supposed to be. I was not that person yet as I drove. I never became her until I was already at least halfway down the drive, sometimes even further. There were the occasional moments, of course, when I stayed my London self all the way inside the house, and that made Max very unhappy — or very happy, depending on one’s perspective — but I had made a deal, and I did try to keep to it. Not that I thought of that on the drive. Being my London self meant I did not give a damn one way or the other. I drove and smoked, and smoked and drove. Sometimes I thought of Helen, sometimes of Jack the night before, sometimes of Max. Sometimes I did not think at all.

When I arrived at Manderley late Wednesday night Max had already gone to bed and so I did too. Danny came in to help me get ready though having got dressed in London, I had no difficult buttons or laces or hair pins. Still she collected each item of clothing as I discarded it, examining each for need of repair, and brushed my hair for me after I was encased in my satin nightgown. “Do you think you will grow your hair out again, Mrs. de Winter?” she asked, and I knew it made her sad that my hair was only a handspan now instead of the long cloud it used to be. I preferred it short. It was so much easier to manage on my own, away from Manderley.

“Only if fashion demands it,” I said. “But don’t you think it looks chic, Danny?”

She assured me that she did think so, though I could hear the regret in her voice. She asked how London had been and I told her about my evening with Jack: the dancing, the subjugation, how silly he looked naked on the floor. She never laughed at my stories but she smiled and I knew they amused her. I laughed for both of us. I wondered if Max could hear me laughing through the dressing room door. Sometimes I laughed even when I didn’t find it funny, because otherwise Danny wondered why I kept up with Jack and the others, and I couldn’t tell her about Helen. If she thought I found Jack amusing, it helped her to understand.

I did not dream at all that night. I rarely dream at Manderley. Perhaps the sound of the sea lulls me to dreamlessness. I woke feeling refreshed and energetic. Though I knew it to be ridiculous, I always felt a kind of magic about the place, perhaps because of the proximity to the water. Just being there knit me into a better person. A very slightly better person.

Max and Frank, his estate manager, were at breakfast when I went downstairs, Jasper following close at my heels. When I was a child, married ladies had their breakfast in bed, but I would have abolished the practice even if it had still been the fashion. I liked to discompose Max over his morning paper, and secondarily I liked the buffet element of the thing. I ate something new for breakfast every day, just to keep them guessing. That day it was a piece of bacon and a cup of coffee. I sat at the far end and cut the bacon into five pieces, watching Frank try not to look at me. Frank was forty or forty-two, a little older than Max, but far less handsome. He had the jowls of a young hound-dog, and something of that equally pathetic and self-righteous air. They had clearly been discussing business before I came in, but they dropped the conversation immediately and Max asked me about London. If Frank had not been there he would have hid behind his paper, but with witnesses he felt compelled to put up a good front. I could tell him how little good it did: Frank knew everything worth knowing at Manderley. He certainly knew that Max and my feelings for each other were not precisely loving.

I trilled a false tale anyway, meeting Max smile for smile. At least my husband was a handsome man. He had a long face but it was beautifully proportioned, with a high forehead and strong nose and a chin that was just unbalanced enough to be interesting. If not for his chin he might have been too pretty. He had long lashes and the full lower-lip of a whore but his upper lip was thin and a little twisted so his default expression wasfaintly ironic. He was not balding and he had not gone to fat despite a general antipathy for the sporting life. No, all in all I had done well in selecting a mate, as long as my criteria was limited to aesthetic pleasures at mealtimes.

We talked about the upcoming house party. I had made all the arrangements before I went up to London, and now there was little to do but wait for the guests to arrive. Max asked who was coming and where they were to stay. He always left it to me; I was sure to invite some of his friends, the right ones to mix in with the people I invited. The few times he had tried to make suggestions for the guest list or the meals or activities there had been some unknown conflict between guests and unpleasantness had ensued, and another thing one could say for Max was that he did not often repeat his mistakes. Casually I mentioned my addition to the guest list, “I invited a writer who hasn’t been here before — a woman I knew at school — and her husband. Patrick and Helen Gould. Though she writes under the name West. He’s in the air force.”

“Helen West? Isn’t she a sort of political writer?”

“She’s a journalist,” I said with a shrug. “Has a novel too, I think, though I haven’t read it. I thought she’d be an excellent distraction for Dicky Thompson. You know how he likes to talk world affairs in the minutest detail and bore everyone to tears. A reporter ought to be able to hold her own. And her husband can talk planes with Stephen Bunting.”

“Where did you meet her?” Max asked.

“Oh Phil mentioned her when I was in London and I thought I might as well look her up, see if she is worth knowing. We had tea and I thought she was very interesting. She’s a Bellhaven by birth, daughter of John Bellhaven. Fascinating stories about growing up with all the great luminaries of the Edwardian theatre. Lady Katherine will like that, I suppose; she always wanted to be an actress but her mother wouldn’t hear of it.”

“Oh, is she coming?” Max asked grumpily as I knew he would. The conversation turned to the rest of the guest list and the matter of Helen’s invitation was forgotten, so boringly normal as to require no further discussion. I looked down at my plate to hide a smile, thinking of what Max would say if I had invited an unmarried man, if I had invited Jack… I could picture so easily the rage in his eyes. How dare I pollute his house with that filth, he would say — not in front of Frank or the footmen, of course, but once we were alone — I must uninvite him immediately, he wouldn’t care how rude it was, or what excuse I gave. But Helen would slip by his vigilant watch. Oh perhaps she was a little radical in her politics, but that could be excused if one had sufficient manners, breeding, if one would contribute to the party and not bore anyone with lectures. Perhaps I should have invited her sooner. I had succeeded in making Max so paranoid about all the wrong people, and meanwhile the only person he should really have feared would walk through the front door, an invited guest whom he would probably say five words to the whole weekend and forget had ever come at all.

My triumph must have shown too obviously on my face, for Max gave me a strange look and I replaced it quickly with a milder smile. “I think I’ll go for a sail before the guests arrive,” I said. “Anyone want to go down the beach with me?”

Of course I knew they would refuse. Max did not particularly like to sail himself, and Frank was avoiding being alone with me, as well he should. I finished my coffee and blew Max a kiss. “See you later, darling,” I said, all sweetness and light.


	4. Two-Faced

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rebecca battles her father.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings for this chapter: Rape, incest, animal cruelty. No wallowing though. Sorry, I felt it had to be done.

_1920_

 

I learned my two-facedness from my father. I take after him in many respects. He, too, could be vicious when he chose. I remember as a child watching him tease my mother for some awkwardness. He leaned in close and petted her, as if to soothe her anxiety, and then all at once his eyes went devilish dark as he assured her that she’d be punished if she transgressed again. Then he kissed her forehead, all solicitude, and my mother’s eyes flickered to me, wondering if I had seen. I would smile at her, so sweetly, but also knowing, and she would look more frightened than ever.

The difference between my father and me is that his cruelty was unplanned and lightning quick. It was gone almost before you knew it had come. It might leave scars nevertheless, great burnt slashes in the flesh, but the violence itself was momentary. My anger has always burned slower and more steadily.

Physically we were also alike, tall and dark and handsome in a particularly aristocratic manner. He was perhaps too pretty for a man: his lips too full, his lashes too long. Cut off my hair and but for a certain width of jaw we might have been twins. He was brilliant but unambitious like many gentlemen of his generation. Not for him the glories of war or empire. He wanted to build up his stables and do whatever he pleased with his horses, his wife, his estate, his daughter, and that was all. To be left alone to live exactly as he wanted without ever doing anything in return, that was all he asked. A son, he wanted a son of course. I am surprised that he never remarried, tried again. But I suppose by the time my mother died I was old enough to have won him over, and I must have opposed the possibility. I could not have borne being replaced.

I could not claim my father and I were close though some would surely think so. During his manic spells he would force me to sit and listen to him talk for hours on end as he detailed his theories of the universe and told me his plans for breeding horses and building the greatest stables in England. I quickly learned how manipulable he was then and rarely emerged from these episodes without some new permission or possession. Other times he would take to his bed for days at a time and I would be summoned to cheer him up. In vain would I struggle. He never responded to my coaxing or stories or shows of virtuosity on the piano, only lay like a block until I became angry and taunted him. Taunting usually worked; his anger would rise and he would forget his despondency in favor of punishing me for my misbehavior. Sometimes I could secure something from these spells too, though he was usually so quiet that my nurse, or later Danny, would not believe me when I swore he had agreed to let me ride his new horse or go to town by myself. So this much I can say: I understood his moods and was the only person with a chance to coax him out of them, good or bad. But close? No, I would not say we were close. I saw him as alternatively frightening and pathetic, an opportunity to practice my burgeoning skills of getting what I wanted. He saw me as a triumph and a failure, as his legacy and his shame. Neither of us thought much of the other person’s humanity. I doubt we loved one another. If we had, how could any of it have happened?

Miss Rogers left us in the heady aftermath of the war. Governesses were old-fashioned by then, there were far better opportunities for a smart young woman in London. I am sure she only came or stayed so long because of my father. He had a terrible episode just before she left, which must have finally convinced her that he was not worth betting on, and his black mood upon her departure lasted for months. I was bored and lonely then, fifteen and a half, desperate for some excitement. I fixed on going to school as the best option, though my daydreams centered more on running away to London and living some life of wild freedom I could not even conjure. However my father would not speak of it, would do nothing to forward it, even sign a letter to a headmistress for me. The more I pestered him about it the more he declared he would kill himself if I left. I told him in no uncertain terms that I would be perfectly satisfied with such an outcome, but he was too much of a coward to actually attempt it. Several times I instructed Danny to tell him I had run away, in hopes he would carry through on his threat. He never did.

Eventually the spring returned and with it my father’s lust for life. He appeared at breakfast one morning and suggested we go riding as if nothing at all had happened. He was better for only a week or two before disappearing to London, leaving me fuming at home. I felt my life was wasting away. I would have preferred him beating me to being ignored and left behind. I hated to think I might be forgotten.

When he returned he brought home a new roan stallion, a brute of a horse which had already savaged one mare but had the most beautiful lines. He was convinced this horse would be the making of him, would breed champions that would be remembered forever in history. The horse was called Geryon, after some mythical monster. My father spoke of him as the son he did not have, and would not let anyone else ride him.

I demanded to be sent away to school and was again refused. There were no theatrics this time, no declarations of suicide. My father simply said no. He would proffer no explanation.

Through the spring and summer we fought about it often and heatedly. Finally I decided that I would, after all, run away. I did not tell anyone, even Danny. I had almost no money, as I was not supposed to go anywhere I might need it. Instead I packed whatever valuables I thought would be easy to transport and sell: my mother’s sapphires, which my father kept in a case in his dressing room, my gold locket and watch, a valuable miniature from a case in the library. I told Danny I was going on a picnic by myself to explain the saddlebags, and hid my things beneath a bundle of food. Then I set off toward E—-. I was sure that once in a large enough town I could pawn my locket or watch for a reasonable price. I would save the sapphires until I was in London where they would be appreciated. I had little or no plan of what I would do after that. I had never stayed in an inn before, or even been out in a public place alone. However I was not at all frightened. Staying at home and (as I imagined) growing old and dying seemed far worse to me than setting out unprepared into the complete unknown.

Needless to say I did not get far. I don’t know if the innkeeper recognized me and sent word, or if my plan was simply too obvious. I was hardly inside my tiny, damp hired room before my father arrived in a towering rage. He did not drag me out to punish me in as humiliating a public fashion as possible, as I half expected him to do. Instead he slammed the door of the room and barred it, and grabbed me by the throat.

I fought him. At first I believe he meant only to spank me, as a disobedient child. I had been a very willful girl and sometimes he had lost his temper with me and beat me to the point of injury, with his hands or a birch rod. This time he used his whip, over my clothing, and then his hand, on my skin. He did not stop there. Even when I was facedown on the bed, my teeth full of well-worn linen, I did not quite believe what was happening. Perhaps I would have screamed, had I known what was in store for me. But I had my pride. I had determined, when I thought a simple beating was in order, that I would not give him the satisfaction of hearing me cry or acknowledge pain of any kind. It was not until later, when I undressed back at home and saw the dried white remains on my skin that it occurred to me he had found satisfaction of another kind, entirely without my participation.

 

The next day I woke up sore but in my own bed. We had ridden home after, every bounce further punishment. We had not spoken. I had refused to let Danny help me undress, lest she see any traces of what had happened. I thought she would probably kill my father if she knew, she was that protective of me. Under normal circumstances she likely would have insisted but she was angry and worried at me for trying to run away and not telling her, so she kept to herself. I washed away all the traces on my skin and threw my clothes in the rubbish heap.

I went to bed exhausted and beaten, but I woke up enraged. An hour later I was on Geryon’s back, fighting him as I should have fought my father. This time I had the whip. He was still bigger and meaner, but I was mean too. My father’s prize stallion bucked and reared and crashed around the paddock and showed the whites of his eyes, and I calmly, cruelly ruined him. I tore his mouth and bloodied his sides until he gave up fighting and put his head down and I knew I had won. I had an audience by then: all the stablehands, and Danny came out to see, everyone but my father. I knew he knew. I slid off the horse and dropped my whip on the bloody ground and went inside. Later Geryon’s wounds became infected and he died of it. I was already away at school by then though, and I did not give a damn.


	5. Je Reviens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rebecca goes sailing before the guests arrive.

_1936_

 

It was a perfect day for a sail. I’d bought my little boat five years before — a fifth anniversary present from Max but I had selected it myself — and almost every day I was at Manderley when time and weather permitted I took her out. Helen had named her Je Reviens, though I told Max it meant I would always come back to Manderley, and then I laughed when he shuddered. Helen had been leaving me then, to marry, but she had promised to return. Thank god she had returned.

Besides Helen, my boat was the closest I could come to peace. Max could not complain about my behavior, Jack could not pester me for money or attention. I like, I found, to be alone, truly, totally alone. Sailing required enough attention and care that my mind could not wander too far, but not enough that it was onerous. When the wind was up and she sailed clear into the horizon I was finally free.

That morning I was sharply reminded that solitude was not always desirable however. I had ducked inside the cabin for my book when the pain hit me. Usually it crept up more slowly but this time it came in a wave — sharp and deep and breathtaking. My abdomen felt as if it has been carved into with dull knives. I gasped and staggered, hitting my head against the door because I wasn’t paying attention. The crack of pain in my temple was almost a welcome distraction, though not strong enough to overshadow the other pain. I sank to the floor, pressing on my flesh as if I could knead the pain away, or push it back down deeper inside. For a moment I could see nothing, feel nothing but agony. I sat on the cabin floor and closed my eyes and waited.

And then it passed. A dull ache remained, but the blinding pain was gone as if it had never been. I sucked in air as if I had been drowning and saw that the door to the cabin had swung shut. The wind outside had picked up and I was heading back toward shore faster than I had meant. Had the pain last longer, I might have run directly onto the rocks. I pushed out of the cabin and quickly tacked away, back into the blue. My arms tingled and my heart ran faster, not at what could have happened but at what did happen. I had lost control. I had given up and let the pain win.

But it was too much, I thought, and then ruthlessly slapped the words down. It was never too much. If I could not master myself, what was I? Always before when it had come I had been able to ignore it, to keep my smile on and my body moving. I had never before succumbed. Was this a fluke, or the beginning of the end? The blank, blue-grey of the water offered no comfort now. Normally I savored the vastness of the ocean. But suddenly it felt overwhelming, one more thing I could not conquer or control. I turned my little ship back to shore.

 

I could not go back to the house just then. I needed to compose myself. After I moored the boat I retreated to the cabin for a drink. The boathouse was made of stone, as if it were shaped out of the cliffs. No one went there except for me and my friends. I opened the windows to let the sea air in and poured myself a whiskey. Helen would be here soon, I told myself. That was all that really mattered. Anyway, what did I care if I ran my boat into the rocks? It would be a good way to die, drowning. One just let go. There couldn’t be much pain, to go like that. Only darkness, oblivion. I hated the idea of being gone, forgotten, but I hated helplessness and pain more. If one had to die, drowning… well, better than some ways. Worse than others. I poured myself a second dram and knocked it back, burning all the way down. The liquor made my teeth unclench and I could breathe again.

It was almost lunch time. Another deathly meal to sit through, though Frank would probably not be there this time. Just me and Max. Then I would need to change before the guests came, do a last minute walk through of the rooms to make sure everything was in order, though Danny had never failed me before. I would make sure she’d put Helen in the blue room near the stairs, so she would not have to creep past everyone to get away. I would make a special arrangement for her room, yes, lilacs and ranunculus and tiny sprays of forget-me-nots. Helen never usually saw that side of me. She had never been to one of our fancy dress balls to see me in full costume and decked with jewels. When she received letters from me they were not on my official stationary, stamped R de W. And she had never seen me arrange flowers, or decorate a room so that everything was displayed to its very best advantage, so it provided stimulation as well as comfort, beauty as well as grace. I was childishly excited for Helen to see me so, as the grand lady of the manor. But a little afraid too. My self image and her image of me had rarely coexisted peacefully. Perhaps she would not like the self I put on at Manderley. She might like me better in a modern London flat with cigarette stains on my fingers and the bright slash of lipstick. Ah, well. This was the only way I could have her today, and I must have her today. She could think whatever she bloody pleased about it.

I rinsed out my whiskey tumbler and left it in the tiny kitchenette. Outside the wind had picked up, blowing white caps on the water. Ben was collecting shells down below. I almost called out to him but thought better of it. If I was kind, he stayed near, seeing things he should not see and talking to everyone about them. I had had to be cruel, more than once, to keep him away. He had no idea how he could hurt me, and so I must make him think I could hurt him. My lips twisted, recognizing the joke that he would never see. Max would be far more likely to consent to throwing me in an insane asylum than Ben, and no one would ever listen to a mere woman on the subject. In fact, if Ben did tell what he’d seen, Max probably would have me locked up, or else divorced and out on the street. What was more embarrassing, a wife who’d become a hysteric or one who had needed to be cast off entirely? Poor Max, having to make such difficult decisions.


	6. Helen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Helen moved upstairs with two battered trunks stamped Royal Shakespeare Company in faded gold letters. “You do have a better view from here,” she said, peering out the window across the lawn to the woods. An earlier snowfall had mostly melted now and the scene was pretty bleak. I thought she was in earnest for a moment, and felt a rush of contempt and frustration, that she too had failed me by being pedestrian and saying what was expected rather than what was true. Then she recited, “There’s a certain Slant of light/Winter afternoons -/That oppresses, like the Heft/ of Cathedral Tunes -“ She had been trained to speak poetry, her voice effortlessly structuring lines, words, meanings. She turned from the window then and smiled at me. “I must like to be oppressed, a little,” she said, and laughed. Her laugh was quiet and clear, a helpless little brook of a laugh."
> 
> Rebecca falls in love.

Walchester was an establishment for young ladies of quality, which is why it is so surprising Helen was there. Of course Helen’s qualities are superior to everyone else’s, but that was not what the headmistress meant. Most of the girls were either from very old families or else very wealthy. Helen, on the other hand, came from the theatre.

Her father was a very famous actor and director at that time, following in his own father’s footsteps. One of her aunts had been famously underclothed in a production of The Tempest. Her uncle was a well-known painter, her great-aunt a novelist. However Helen’s mother was blue-blooded, and Helen herself academically inclined, and so her maternal grandparents called in a favor and offered to pay her school fees, and against all odds Helen enrolled at Walchester.

I was fascinated by her immediately. Having grown up in London, with no country estate to be shut up in while her parents frolicked, Helen was far more sophisticated than the other sixteen and seventeen year old girls in our form. She had shingled hair, which in 1920 was still quite shocking, and her brother sent her cigarettes and whiskey hidden in false bottoms beneath the usual sweets and extra pairs of stockings from her mother. She consumed these items without blinking an eye, knocking back liquor when most of us were still sipping sherry and smoking cigarette after cigarette out the window after we were supposed to be asleep. But for all her London cant and stories of real grown-up parties, Helen was still remarkably innocent. She laughed early and often, a soft hiccuping, helpless sort of laugh. She blushed too, violent pink spreading up her neck and settling onto her apple cheeks. She was brilliant but humble, taking it for granted that she would learn everything easily and shrugging off any praise as undeserved because her mind just worked that way. She dressed like a fashion plate — altered castoffs from last season’s plays she admitted to me once — but was always untidy, like a child who is used to her nurse buttoning her up in the morning.

School was not what I had expected. I had not realized the level of freedom I enjoyed at home until every moment of my day was suddenly regimented and overseen with a strict eye. I had no trouble academically. Helen and I competed to be first in our class, but neither of us gave enough of a damn for the competition to be fierce. I chafed however, at not being able to go riding whenever I wished, at having to eat every meal under the watchful eyes of the teachers and share a room with another girl who snored.

My first roommate was named Elizabeth Trower, a plump, middle-class prig of a girl. I drove her out within a fortnight by constantly complimenting her clothes and figure in such a way that she knew — everyone knew — I was calling her fat, ugly, and dowdy. She was replaced with Lady Barbara Lillisham — Bunny — who was too stupid to know when she was being insulted. She was pretty however, and I discovered I liked to watch her brush out her long blond hair each night and pin it up so that it would wave properly the next day. She had dimples in her elbows and her knees, and large, high breasts with pale pink nipples which showed through her chemise. It was the custom then to change with one’s back to one’s roommate, but partly in hopes of shocking her enough to drive her away, and partly because I simply liked it, I took to staring right at her whenever she dressed or undressed, or whenever I did. She blushed very nicely (though not so well as Helen’s hotter flush, as I was to discover). What a laugh it is, to think I first felt desire watching Lady Bunny Lillisham scramble to get out of her chemise and into her nightgown while only half understanding why she hurried at all. Bunny and I shared a room for several months, until the Christmas holiday when she became suddenly engaged to a friend of her brother’s and did not return to school. I was sorry to lose the chance to watch her, but I was pleased not to have to listen to her inane musings on the day’s happenings, or hear her whinge about the difficulty of our history exams.

During that first semester I was aware of Helen, but we were not yet close. She had few friends at Walchester, due partly to the snobbery of the other girls and partly to her own, less traditional, version. A few “fast” young ladies liked her as a novelty and for her access to the racy world of London theatre, and a few of the brainier girls appreciated her brilliance, but most were too shy to engage with her directly for fear of being ostracized by the reigning queens of Walchester, a clique of aristocrats who had declared her low-class and grubby.

My first order of business upon arriving — besides getting rid of Trower — was taking over this clique. Joining them was no trouble at all. Though my father was not a lord, his father was a baron, and my mother’s father had been an earl. We could trace our lineage back to royalty sometime within five hundred years, and except for Jack’s parents, had rarely married outside of our class. Moreover I was already beautiful, which holds a certain kind of caché with teenage girls if it is used properly. I knew they envied me, but I did not immediately reveal that I agreed that they should. Instead I was humble without stepping over the line into false humility. I mentioned that I had never had a sister or any girl cousins, that my mother had died when I was a child. I asked for advice on behavior and how to style my hair, and complimented them when I could find something about them remotely worth the effort. I had never spent much time with other girls since my mother died and we ceased to visit with her friends with other young children. At first there may even have been an element of truth to my persona: I did have questions then as every young girl does about how to look my best, how to act in a new situation. But it was not long before I began to feel nothing more than contempt for the girls who held themselves so high above the others in the school. They had no inherent sense of style, no new ideas, no daring, no imagination. They had access to fashion magazines, that was all, and money to order things from them. Their snobbery was based not on superiority but on birth and beauty alone. They had no ambition, besides marrying well, and seemed entirely unaware of or uninterested in the modern world which I longed to join. Very soon my flattery became entirely false, and then dwindled altogether, for they had already accepted me as one of them.

By the end of the first semester I was known to be one of the leaders of the school, perhaps the girl with the best taste, brains, and beauty. I got myself invited to France for the Christmas holiday with Lady Philippa Drew, the daughter of the marquess of Camhalt, an invitation my father could not possibly refuse. Danny wrote me a terribly sad letter when she learned I would not be returning home, but I could not take the chance my father would attempt revenge for the loss of his horse. I disliked Phil quite strongly, but even the prospect of three weeks in her company could not make me go home. Anyway, her only brother was ten years old, which was why I had given her to understand an invitation would be acceptable to me. Brothers, I had realized, were likely to be just as dangerous as cousins and fathers.

We stayed mostly on her father’s yacht, which was the first time I had been sailing in years. I loved everything about it: the sound and feel and smell and taste of the sea, the intricate workings of the ship and the crew, the freedom to call wherever we wished. Despite Phil’s basic stupidity and her brother and sisters’ tiresome chatter and her mother’s jealousy at how much better-looking I was than her daughter, I managed to thoroughly enjoy myself.

When we returned to school I was fully integrated into, if not actually in charge of, the social elite of Walchester. I was also roommate-less, since Bunny had not returned. Phil and a few of the other girls made noises about moving in with me and what fun we would have, and since that was the absolute last thing I wanted, I went to the headmistress and introduced the idea that I ought to be roomed with the other academic leader of the school, as we would be ever so much more studious this way. I did not say it quite like that — she thought it was entirely her idea — but the following week, Helen and I moved in together. (To my supposed friends I complained about this bitterly — the first, though certainly not the last, time I would publicly disown Helen while privately binding her ever closer to me.)

Looking back my actions seem like those of someone who knew precisely what she wanted, but at the time I was almost puzzled by my own behavior. I barely knew Helen, though I had smoked one of her cigarettes once and we had spoken in or around class many times. If you had asked me then if I thought her beautiful I would have laughed and made a snide comment about her deep set eyes and prominent chin. Had one of my friends been there I would probably also have mentioned her untidiness, though secretly I was already a little in awe of her apparent carelessness. I wanted to be someone who did not care enough to make sure I always looked just right, but I knew I was not. Despite all the trouble it had caused me, I still wanted to be admired, by everyone, always. In any case, I did not find her physically attractive. I think I found her mind attractive then, the way she knit facts so quickly together to form an irrefutable argument, the words that apparently poured forth from her pen (our teachers would often read her essays aloud as her prose style was already unique and impressive). I might also have been conscious of an attraction to her sophistication, which seemed so much more genuine to me than the airs put on by girls like Phil who happened to have been all over Europe but had never actually left the bubble of her parents’ protection in any of the places she had gone. I don’t think I thought then about her spirit, about her youthfulness and capacity for joy; maybe I didn’t know about them, or maybe I didn’t know I could value those things. All I knew really was that I wanted to know more about her. I wanted access to her, as much to unlock the puzzle of my own interest as to intuit her secrets.

When I admitted, later, that I had arranged the move, Helen laughed and told me she had suspected it all along. “It was just so strange and abrupt,” she explained, “And the natural thing for Mrs. Corring to do was to put you with one of the other girls like you. Almost all the really important, wealthy girls roomed together in the south hall. If she had not had your consent, she would never have burdened you with a little nothing like me. I could not figure out why though. You seemed so ambitious. I thought you were just like the rest of them, only smarter and better at it. But that didn’t fit with you wanting me. It didn’t make any sense. Yet it had to be you. I just knew that you had done it.”

Helen moved upstairs with two battered trunks stamped Royal Shakespeare Company in faded gold letters. “You do have a better view from here,” she said, peering out the window across the lawn to the woods. An earlier snowfall had mostly melted now and the scene was pretty bleak. I thought she was in earnest for a moment, and felt a rush of contempt and frustration, that she too had failed me by being pedestrian and saying what was expected rather than what was true. Then she recited, “There’s a certain Slant of light/Winter afternoons -/That oppresses, like the Heft/ of Cathedral Tunes -“ She had been trained to speak poetry, her voice effortlessly structuring lines, words, meanings. She turned from the window then and smiled at me. “I must like to be oppressed, a little,” she said, and laughed. Her laugh was quiet and clear, a helpless little brook of a laugh.

I felt lighter than air suddenly and I smiled back at her, only a little sly. “Then I think we’ll get along very well,” I said.

We did get along well. At night we would sit by the window, me in a chair with my feet up and Helen on her knees in her dressing gown slouched against the wall, one hand dangling just over the window frame despite the impossible angle of her shoulder, and smoke her illicit cigarettes and talk about poetry and politics and our ambitions until it grew too cold or we heard the steps of the hall mistress coming to check on us and dove into bed. Helen wanted to be a writer. She had acted on the stage when she was younger, filling small children’s roles in her father’s productions, but she thought the profession too self-involved and not sufficiently revolutionary. Beneath her amiable facade she was an ardent communist and suffragette. She would ply me with Leninist pamphlets translated into English and stories of factory workers maimed and women who died bearing their tenth child in as many years and other horrible things. I loved to ask her innocent-seeming questions and set her off on a rant. She would forget everything, forget where we were and what time it was, and leap to her feet striding around the room declaiming on the need for welfare programs and wage controls until our neighbors pounded on the walls in outrage. She became totally unselfconscious in these moments, pulling on her hair, biting her nails, but her eyes flashing and her voice passionate and sure as Lady Macbeth or Antigone. She was beauty personified then. I would watch silently, hungrily, drinking in her theatrical gestures and the way her lip plumped when she worried it with her teeth.

One night as she held forth on — who knows what, I’ve forgotten — I had the sudden, intense urge to bite her lip myself, to feel what it must feel like, soft and a little chapped, to actually capture her breath, all her words, in my mouth and take them inside of me. I turned to look away, out the window, shocked at the intensity of the heat in my stomach. My hands trembled with wanting to grab her, and I ground out my cigarette in case she could see the glowing tip shaking.

“What is it, Min?” she asked, pausing mid-rant (she had dubbed me Minerva, after the Roman goddess of wisdom and war). I had hoped she would not notice. Sometimes I pushed her so far into her thoughts she ceased to see me at all, and then I was forlorn but also glad because I could drink her in without worry or interruption.

“What? Oh, I wasn’t really paying attention,” I said casually, cruelly. She frowned, and came over to touch my arm. I jerked away from her touch, though of course I wanted to do the opposite. She did not go, though. She returned to her spot on the floor and put her head against my leg and, not able to help myself, I put my hand into her hair. Her hair was dark blond, almost ashy, not a remarkable color at all, but it was very fine and soft. I wanted to close my hand into a fist and pull on it. I imagined how her head would tilt back, exposing her neck to me.

“You should tell me if I’m talking too much,” she said in a small voice. I hated that I’d hurt her but I loved it too — that she cared whether I listened or not.

“I will,” I said.

When we were not alone together, I wanted to be. In public we still kept our distance without discussion. I maintained my place as faultless leader of the school. The headmistress would call me to meet parents, alumna, and other guests because I was the ideal Walchester girl. Younger girls idolized me, bringing me gifts from their parents’ parcels, asking my advice on their clothes or hair or how to write a letter home. During my first semester I had dreamt up terrible schemes for my power. I had planned to ruin friendships, ostracize girls whom I found particularly grating, secretly make mock of everything they held dear. But when it came to it, I was too wrapped up in Helen to bother. Instead I played my part with as little effort as I could manage, while all my thought and feeling was directed toward our secret life. This was my first true taste of living a double life. I learned how easy it was to make other people like me: smile more than I wanted to, ask them questions, never show contempt or anger, but also never offer so much that they felt entitled to more. My presence and my favor must always seem like a boon to them, or else they stayed and talked too long or came to my room when I was alone with Helen, the only thing that had the power to truly upset me. Besides that, everything else was just looking the part: people liked me because I was beautiful, it was really as simple as that.

But all I wanted, all day every day, was to be back in my room with Helen. I would watch her in class, covertly, puzzle out how no one else could see how marvelous it was, the way she slid her fingers up the back of her neck, and think about when we would be alone again. If someone dared to come to our room after dinner, I would tongue-lash them with a cold fury I could not explain to Helen or myself. She would laugh at these incidents and ask me what bee had found itself trapped in my bonnet today, but I wondered if she knew really. I wondered all the time how she actually felt, if she thought about me as much as I thought about her. I knew she was not the kind of girl who cared about looks or clothes and for the first time in my life I felt that I might not be enough for someone, that perhaps she could and would resist me. The thought drove me mad.

Within the confines of our room we were physically affectionate, but we never went beyond the common touching girls at the school constantly did with each other: holding hands, kissing on the cheek, playing with each other’s hair. Still these activities took on more and more meaning when there was no one else there to see them. We would lie in one bed, our arms entirely pressed up against each other and our fingers clasped. I was always the aggressor; it was I who first began not just to hold her hand but to stroke it, awakening each nerve with my fingertip. I kissed her hand once, in the midst of a conversation about chivalry, as a joke, and then when she paused, again. We would undress in front of each other, neither turning away, but Helen, who had grown up in dressing-rooms, seemed not to think this odd, and I found myself reluctant to take advantage of her casual, though always short-lived, nudity by actually staring as I had at Bunny. Though I longed to look at her, I did not want Helen to feel unsafe around me.

Everything changed when we went to Cornwall on holiday, and more specifically on the day we discovered Manderley. The whole upper-form went on on a school holiday in the spring. We were taken to a beach to go bathing, and we rented sailboats for a day, and we went fossil-hunting to prove that the trip was educational. One day when everyone was occupied on the beach, Helen and I snuck away. We were not roommates on the trip and I had missed her desperately. We wandered up the coastline, picking our way over rocks and fences, uncaring if we trespassed. I held her hand and she held her hat on because she had lost her hat pin. We talked about the things that had happened on the trip so far, stupid gossip about our fellow students and the teachers, and speculation about dinosaurs and evolutionary theory. Finally we came to the cove, to our cove though we did not know it then. It was empty and secluded, only us and the water. We skipped stones and practiced lines for the upcoming school play which Helen had penned. I was to play Boadicea, murderous queen of the Iceni, who in Helen’s telling was mostly interested in returning the rightful property of common man which had been stolen by the Roman money-lenders (thinly veiled capitalist oligarchs). Helen was teaching me stage tricks: how to walk like a queen, how to project my voice, etc.

Finally I grew bored practicing and suggested we explore the woods. At first Helen protested: the beach was a public throughway but the woods certainly belonged to somebody. “They’re practically wild,” I insisted, “Nobody can be keeping very good care of them.” I thought of the first day, Helen looking down across the lawn to the sad winter woods. These woods were full of spring: green leaves and buds and the whir and hum of insects. “A Light exists in Spring,” I declaimed, “Not present in the Year/At any other period -“ Helen laughed, knowing she couldn’t refuse now, and offered me her hand again, and we went into the woods.

I don’t know that I have ever felt such perfect happiness as I did that day, when I kissed Helen and she kissed me back. I wonder sometimes how different our lives would have been if I had done it sooner, in our cosy room at school, or a few beaches back even; how much of Manderley’s power came from that moment, how much of what I have done has been to try to recapture it?

 

How cliché all the stories of young lovers and springtime. We made no excuses for ourselves, but dove headlong into the sea of sentiment. Once our shared desires were revealed neither of us felt there was any need to hold back and we poured out our feelings in a rush of words and caresses. I worshipped every part of her, and told her so, and showed her with my mouth and hands, drunk on the power to make her smile, to make her whimper and arch off the bed, to make her flush on her face and throat and across her pale breasts. She looked at me with wonder when I touched her, though I had never known less what to do or how to do it. Everything was an exploration, an attempt, and no one demanded mastery. It was enough that we were together.

After bed checks Helen would climb into my bed in her nightgown and we would sleep pressed together, her head pillowed between my breasts, our legs tangled. In the middle of the night I would wake with a start, panicking at her weight on me, but then I would feel her soft, hot breath and her small hand against my stomach and all the fear would drain out of me. I was happy the way only the young can be happy. I thought we would be like that forever.

The only thing that we ever fought about then was our families. Helen told me everything about her family, all of whom she adored: her father with his booming king’s voice and his sensitive understanding of human folly, her mother patient and helplessly cheerful and always under siege, her brothers Eddie and Freddy — Eddie had died in the war and Freddy was an actor and wanted to go to Hollywood — and her sisters Mona (Desdemona really), a housewife, and Beatrice, the youngest, destined to surpass them all in actorly glory one day. I, on the other hand, lied through my teeth. I told her my mother had died of course, but I said it had been sudden, a fever, and I barely remembered and did not miss her. I said my father was a typical English country gentlemen, a man who cared more for his horses than for people, and had not cracked a book since taking a third at Oxford. At the time I almost convinced myself these things were true. It was as if I had taken all my life before Helen and put it away in a closet and locked the door. Thinking of it gave me an unpleasant feeling but I could not really remember why, just that it was not worth opening that door ever again. I think I was afraid that if I let out any of that horror, it would poison us somehow, hurt Helen. Or perhaps I was just afraid she would not love me anymore if she knew who I really was, where I had come form, what I had done. She knew I was not being entirely honest with her; Helen was always better able than anyone to see through my deceptions. So she would pester me sometimes, at first teasingly, and then more seriously, asking me to trust her and tell her the truth. But I could not. When the play approached, and both my father and Helen’s whole family planned to attend, Helen began asking to meet him, and I knew that could not happen. If she spoke to him, even set eyes on him, she would know I had lied outright. I didn’t know what state my father would be in either — he was coming, which suggested he was not confined to bed in his darkest of moods — but would he appear normal, amiable, or would he be manic, still furious with me for what I’d done? I refused and Helen accused me of being ashamed of her, which of course was the opposite of the truth, that I was ashamed of myself — but I could not say the words, and she could not imagine I, always so confident, might feel that way, and so we stormed off, our very first hurt feelings.

We made up shortly thereafter. I said it was not her of course, but that we must keep pretending to the rest of the world that we were indifferent, and wouldn’t it look strange if we went out of our way to introduce each other to our families? Helen accepted this and never held a grudge. Nothing could erase that first shadow on our happiness though, for me. Now I knew she could look at me with hurt and betrayal and I might stand by and let it happen, knowing that I could say the words to soothe her. It made me remember who I really was, beneath the person Helen thought me to be.

 

Had I known how swiftly and completely our idyll would end, would I have done anything differently? I do not think I could have savored each moment any more, even though I imagined a thousand more to come. Perhaps I would have recorded it in some way because I must admit that some of the details have faded now, though I have hoarded them, turning them over and over in my mind. How exactly did Helen’s voice sound when she first whispered that she loved me? How much gold was in her hair on the beach that morning, and how much brown? Did she first touch me back on that warm spring day when we canceled rehearsal and borrowed bicycles to go to town to buy props but only made it to a damp, glorious meadow? Or was it earlier, some half-forgotten night when we lay almost asleep and suddenly I felt her hand on my thigh and she murmured, “Let me, please, Min,” and I did, I let her give and perhaps turned away my face so she would not feel me weeping at the pleasure of it? Did I weep? Did she, ever? I can’t remember now.

 

It was our own joy that undid us in the end. It only took a moment. We had grown careless, exchanging small touches, looks, as we passed each other in the halls or the library. We began to meet in secret in dark corridors and unused rooms, behind the scenery in the theatre, anywhere so that we could touch each other and whisper and laugh. One day the English teacher, Miss Kerrith, found us backstage, kissing, my hand in Helen’s shirt. Even I could not come up with an excuse quick enough. An hour later, I was on a train home.


	7. Arrangements

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Helen arrives at Manderley for the weekend house party.

_1936_

The success or failure of a house party — even a piddling little weekend party — is determined before the first guest sets foot in the door. In the first years after I married Maxim, the staff was raw, untrained, or too old to care anymore and subsequently thrown into disarray by any unforeseen circumstance. Before a single guest arrived I would spend days overseeing every arrangement: checking the linens on every bed were fresh, the corners dusted, the menus set and dough rising, the appropriate wine brought up from the cellar, the paths to the beach cleared, the hedges trimmed, an extra supply of brandy and bandages and dog food and needles and thread and handkerchiefs and umbrellas and warm slippers laid in. Eight years in, and overseen by Danny’s eagle eye, a spider would not dare leave a cobweb in a corner of Manderley, nor would a footman panic over a dropped decanter. Everyone knew their place and role and fulfilled it to perfection.

Which meant I could go sailing after lunch, and arrange flowers for Helen’s room, and take a very quick tour of the guest rooms with Danny. She was surprised by the vase I carried into Helen’s room, and she was not surprised often. “If Colonel and Mrs. West are important, perhaps we should put them in a larger room?” she suggested after a moment of staring at the riotous arrangement.

“No, they will do very well here,” I said, adopting a dismissive tone I rarely used with Danny.

Her lips thinned in displeasure and I felt a pang of guilt for hiding this, this one solitary thing, from my dearest Danny.

“It is their first visit to Manderley,” I said, softening my tone a little, “and likely their last! Better give the woman something to write about.”

I could tell she did not buy it, not entirely, but Danny nodded and turned the vase a little, to better show off the blue rhododendrons.

The first guests arrived shortly thereafter and the remainder trickled in over the next few hours: a few of the more interesting of Maxim’s school friends, an archbishop, a shipping magnate and his American wife, a viscount and family, and an aviator and sailor who had nearly won the America’s Cup two years before. But no Helen and Phillip West. I greeted each one of them personally, told them how glad I was to see them. What a fun weekend we would have. How Manderley was entirely at their disposal. All the time, I was waiting. When would she come? Was there any possibility she would not come? Suppose Phillip asked too many questions about the invitation? It’s not as if they were invited to great houses every weekend. What if she did not come? Would I survive it?

Of course I would survive it, I told myself. Of course. And yet.

I was half a wreck by the time she appeared, tripping over her own feet coming in the door. Her husband was shorter than her but not bad-looking, with a sort of earnest charm that matched hers. I’d seen him before, though we had not been introduced. There had been a brief rain shower in the afternoon and Helen hadn’t worn a scarf so there were drops of water trembling on the tips of her hair where it stuck out under her beret. Her lipstick was worn from the center of her lips as if she had forgotten to reapply after her last meal. She laughed at herself and refused Fritz’s help removing her coat. She was wearing wide-legged trousers and a white cotton shirt, entirely too casual for an event such as this. I wanted to rub myself all over her.

Jasper went straight to her, barking in excitement, as he hadn’t for the other guests. Jasper knew her of course, had spent many nights in the cottage with us. Helen bent down to say hello, “What a darling dog,” she said to Patrick as if she had never seen him before.

“You’re the last to arrive,” Maxim said behind me, “I hope you didn’t have trouble finding the place.”

They looked up for the first time, noticing the hall and Maxim and me. Helen’s eyes met mine and I think I may have flushed, though I haven’t done that in years. She was here, in Manderley. I almost could not believe it.

“Not at all,” Patrick said, coming forward to shake Maxim’s hand. Maxim gave me an odd look as he passed me by — it was unusual for me to not say hello to our guests first — and I started forward a step behind him. “We were late getting on the road. Had to get the kiddies settled. Thanks for having us.”

“Jasper, sit,” I snapped at the dog, as if that had been my entire focus. “Maxim, this is Colonel West and Mrs. West. Colonel, Helen, this is my husband Maxim de Winter. I’m Rebecca de Winter. So pleased to meet you Colonel. Helen, welcome. I’m so pleased you could make it.” I shook Patrick’s hand and then Helen’s. Her fingers were cold and I had the old desire to warm them, to tuck them into my pockets. I made myself let go, glance at her face only for a moment and then look away.

“Would you like tea or perhaps you’d like to freshen up first? It’s almost time for the dinner gong, so you may wish to just go up to your rooms and settle in?”

“I hope we didn’t keep you waiting,” Helen said.

“Oh no, we never wait dinner for anyone at Manderley,” Maxim assured her. “You are perfectly on time. You’ve missed all the fuss of everyone trying to make polite chit chat when they are really tired from the road and ready for a drink. Colonel, have you ever been to this part of the country before?”

Maxim and Patrick fell into step ahead, up the grand staircase. Helen and I walked very slowly behind, each step inching them further away. “You’re here,” I murmured, still unable to get past the basic fact.

Helen was looking around, assessing the hall, the flowers, the footmen’s livery. “It’s quite something. I always rather pictured the cottage but large, but this is spectacular. Old England at its very apex. Maybe I shall write a piece about it after all. But it would have to be entirely flattering or you wouldn’t invite me back, hmm?”

I wanted her to return my longing gaze, to melt into a laughing brook at my feet. She was punishing me for my distance recently. Or perhaps she was simply more interested in the house.

She glanced over and must have seen it in my face. “Oh, Min, don’t look at me like that,” she murmured, her voice pitched very low. She reached out and pinched a piece of my dress in her fingers and her eyebrows drew together. “You’re so thin. Darling, how can you have gotten even thinner?”

“I missed you,” I said back, quietly, so quietly, aware our husbands were now halfway up the stairs, and somewhere steps behind us stood my butler and at least one footman.

She worried her lower lip with her teeth and I thought, that’s what happened to her lipstick, and I wanted so much to kiss her instead of any of the rest of it. I turned to call Jasper, who bounded happily after us. By the time I looked back her her face had cleared and she smiled and said, “I’m here now.”

She was. She was here. We were here, together in Manderley at last.


End file.
